blue screen on restore: SATA, RAID, Dell

This applies to other new systems than just Dell desktops.

Scenario: backup old system: ATA, PATA
New system: SATA, RAID motherboard

Use Acronis to restore and all goes well.

Blue screen on boot, right after the XP (blue scrolling) logo, but before the login screen.

Restore from IDE/PATA system to SATA (newer) you'll typically find that the mother board / SATA controller will by default place the SATA drive in RAID mode even though you have only one disk. This is the case for Dell E520 and probably most of the new Dell SATA desktop systems.

The old OS doesn't know about RAID or the driver. Go into the BIOS and change the SATA configuration to ATA (or IDE which ever your BIOS says), just not RAID.

Your restore should at least get past the XP logo on boot up. Your next problem will be whether your old windows system has a driver for the new system's VGA controller and can figure this out on boot up. Some say here that if you set your old system down to VGA mode you might come up on the new system.

If your old system died and you can't change to VGA mode prior to backup here's some ideas that I've not tried mind you:

- Buy a VGA card with the same chip as the old system. Get your OS restored and the new VGA card's driver installed, then swap to the new VGA card. (this worked for me with the Dell restore). The Intel VGA controller on the mother board was the same as the one piece of luck I had.

- Buy Acronis Workstation with the optional Universal Install (??) and put the new VGA driver on a floppy/cd and some how UI picks it up. Don't know the ins and outs.

good luck, curt

 

I forgot to tag the first post as an Answer for others to find and not a Question.

 

Hello curt504,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please find my reply in this previous thread you have started.

Thank you.
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Aleksandr Isakov